“Top of the World” by Patty Griffin

Patty Griffin wrote "Top of the World" alone, words and music, and first cut it in 2000 for Silver Bell, an album that went into the vaults when a dispute with A&M Records got her dropped from the label; it stayed unreleased for 13 years. Copies of the record circulated around the business anyway and raised her standing as a songwriter. Her own recording finally reached the public on Impossible Dream in 2004.

It's a ghost story of a sort: the song speaks for a man who has already died, looking down on the life he led and weighed down with regret, wishing he'd been another kind of man and had not done such harm to the people closest to him.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.